The laws on fines, like the majority of other Russian laws, do not apply to all factories and mills, nor to all workers. When issuing a law, the Russian government is always afraid of offending the gentlemen factory owners and mill owners, afraid that the intricate web of bureaucratic rules and the rights and duties of officials will collide with some other bureaucratic rules (and we have an innumerable multitude of them), with the rights and duties of some other officials who will be mortally offended if some new official encroaches upon their domain, and will squander barrels of government ink and reams of paper on correspondence about "delimitation of jurisdiction." Rare is the law, therefore, that is introduced in Russia all at once for the entire country, without exceptions, without cowardly delays, without allowing ministers and other officials to permit deviations from the law.

All this has had a particularly strong effect on the law on fines, which, as we have seen, aroused such discontent among the gentlemen capitalists, and which was enacted only under the pressure of formidable workers' uprisings.

First, the law on fines applies only to a small part of Russia [21]. This law was issued, as we have said, on June 3, 1886, and came into effect from October 1, 1886, only in three gubernias: Petersburg, Moscow, and Vladimir. Five years later, the law was extended to the gubernias of Warsaw and Petrokov (June 11, 1891). Then, after another three years, it was extended to 13 more gubernias (namely: from the central gubernias – Tver, Kostroma, Yaroslavl, Nizhny Novgorod, and Ryazan; from the Baltic gubernias – Estonia and Livonia; from the western – Grodno and Kiev; from the southern – Volhynia, Podolia, Kharkov, and Kherson) – by the law of March 14, 1894. In 1892, the rules on fines were extended to private mines and enterprises.

The rapid development of capitalism in southern Russia and the enormous growth of mining operations gather masses of workers there and force the government to hurry.

The government, as is evident, very slowly relinquishes the old factory orders. It must be noted in this connection that it relinquishes them only under the pressure of workers: the intensification of the workers' movement and strikes in Poland brought about the extension of the law to the gubernias of Warsaw and Petrokov (the city of Łódź belongs to Petrokov gubernia). The enormous strike at the Khludov manufactory in Yegorievsk District of Ryazan gubernia immediately brought about the extension of the law to Ryazan gubernia {23}. The government – plainly to see – also does not "consider itself entitled" to take away from the gentlemen capitalists their right to uncontrolled (arbitrary) fining, so long as the workers themselves do not intervene.

Second, the law on fines, like all regulations on supervision of factories and mills, does not apply to establishments belonging to the state treasury and government institutions. At state-owned mills there exists its own "benevolent" administration over the workers, which the law does not wish to burden with rules on fines. Indeed, why supervise state-owned mills when the mill commander is himself a state official? Workers can lodge complaints against him with him. It is no wonder that among these commanders of state mills there are such blackguards as, for example, the commander of the Petersburg port, Mr. Verkhovskii.

Third, the rules on fine funds, expended on the needs of the workers themselves, do not apply to workers in the workshops of those railways that have pension or savings-assistance funds. The fine money goes into these funds.

Even all these exceptions seemed somehow insufficient, and the law stipulated that the ministers (of Finance and Internal Affairs) have the right, on the one hand, to "exempt" "insignificant factories and mills, in cases of genuine necessity" from compliance with these rules, and on the other hand, to extend these rules to "significant" artisanal establishments.

Thus, not only did the law entrust the minister with composing rules on fine money – it also gave ministers the right to exempt certain factory owners from compliance with the law! To what degree does our law's courteousness toward the gentlemen factory owners extend! In one of the minister's clarifications, it is stated that he exempts only such factory owners about whom the factory board is "convinced that the establishment's owner will not violate the interests of workers." Factory owners and factory inspectors are such close friends and acquaintances that they trust each other's word. Why burden the factory owner with rules when he "assures" that he will not violate the interests of workers? Well, but what if a worker tried to ask the inspector or minister to exempt him from the rules, "assuring" that he would not violate the interests of the factory owner? Such a worker would probably be considered insane.

This is called the "equal rights" of workers and factory owners.

As for the extension of the rules on fines to significant artisanal establishments, until now, as far as is known, these rules have been extended only (in 1893) to distribution offices that distribute warp to home-workers engaged in weaving. The ministers are not hastening to extend the rules on fines. The entire mass of workers laboring at home for bosses, for large shops, and so forth, remains until now in the old condition, in complete subjection to the arbitrary rule of bosses. It is more difficult for these workers to unite together, to confer about their needs, to undertake common struggle against the oppression of bosses – and therefore they are not paid attention to.